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Today's News: Our Take - 20 Spoilers We Learned from the Revolution Panel at WonderCon
Viva la Revolution!
NBC's hit genre series finally returned last week and quickly proved that no one is safe. Danny (Graham Rogers) paid the ultimate price, dying a hero after shooting down one of Monroe's (David Lyons) choppers. So how will Danny's death change the series? And what's next for the rebels? The cast of Revolution dished what's in store at Saturday's WonderCon panel, moderated by this reporter, who was able to get scoop on the finale, a steamy kiss, a kidnapping, torture and much, much more. Check it out:
Revolution Sneak Peek: What's next for the rebellion?
1. Danny's death: Danny's death will send certain characters, Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) especially, on a quest for revenge. "The first half of the season was about finding Danny and the second half of the season is about getting Monroe and making him pay," co-executive producer David Rambo says.
2. The capsule: After Danny died, dear old mom Rachel (Elizabeth Mitchell) pulled out a weird blinking capsule from his body. What does it mean?!"It's kind of the center of things," Mitchell says, noting that next Monday's episode will shed more light on the capsule is and how it is connected to the blackout.
3. Charlie's revenge: Charlie was already a pretty angry adolescent, but we'll come to find that she's pretty much kissed her childhood goodbye. "She's really turning into a warrior," Spiridakos says. "Now, with the loss of Danny, something kind of dies inside of her and she really battles with that. You'll see going forward she's really worried if she's going to lose her humanity throughout all of this and where her morals actually lie."
4. Monroe's sanity: When Miles (Billy Burke) wrote off Monroe in the midseason finale, Monroe went off the deep end. "He starts to plummet into a fairly dark place and makes some interesting choices as a result," Lyons says. "His world, as broad and as massive as it is, revolves around this relationship with Miles. So we'll see them meet again and what the outcome of that is and the different emotional places that puts the characters in."
5. Aaron's wife: Aaron (Zak Orth) will come face-to-face with Priscilla (Maureen Sebastian), the wife he once abandoned. "It goes well-ish considering," Orth says with a laugh. In all seriousness, Aaron will have bigger fish to fry when Rachel tells him the truth about the blackout. "I think Aaron is just way in over his head and is about to realize that the extent to which he's involved in this is more than he ever could've imagined. Part of what makes him realize that is reconnecting with his wife and realizing that's over because he left her."
Revolution Burning Questions: Can you believe who died?
6. Ben's involvement: Most of the season has focused on Rachel's guilt over her involvement in the blackout, but we'll learn that Ben (Tim Guinee) shoulders some of the blame as well. "There's guilt to go around," Guinee says.
7. Miles' softer side: Now that he's working with the rebels, we'll see a more vulnerable side to the former militia general. "Contrary to what's happening with Charlie, Miles is finding that his association with these people that he's hanging around with now is bringing out stuff in him that he never wanted to ever show and never really knew he had," Burke says. "Some of that soft, gooey guts in there that's starting to come out and it's making him sick."
8. Rachel and Miles' past revealed: If you haven't checked out the spoilery trailer, the duo shares a hot and heavy smooch in an upcoming episode - which is shocking since it was only a few episodes ago that Rachel had asked Charlie whether Miles had hurt her. "We learn a lot about what happened between them," Mitchell says, calling Burke a wonderful kisser. Rambo noted that it was the onscreen intensity between the actors that led to that story line.
9. Miles gets all the ladies: As if Miles isn't getting enough action between Rachel and his kiss with Nora (Daniella Alonso) last week, we'll also meet his high school sweetheart, played by 24's Annie Wersching. "There's a little conflict with her and Monroe," Burke teases. Lyons calls it a "messy triangle" and we'll get a glimpse into their lives when they were just 17 years old.
10. Nora gets kidnapped: The militia will kidnap Nora in hopes of gleaning information. "Nora is a survivor," Alonso teases of her time with Monroe.
11. The blackout revealed: Mark your calendars, people:The April 8 episode will reveal exactly why the blackout occurred. "When we find out why the lights went out, we will find that it unlocks even more mysteries and more things to pursue, [like] who was responsible," Rambo says.
12. Jason returns: Spiridakos says that Jason (JD Pardo) will be around more in the back half of the season, "But as far as trust for him goes, it's tough because every time she trusts him, something bad ends up happening," she says. "At the beginning, she was trusting everybody and all these bad things happened, so now she's a little bit more cautious."
Revolution creator Eric Kripke: "I'm glad we took the break"
13. Neville undone: Neville (Giancarlo Esposito) will find himself in the rebels' clutches - and Miles will be more than happy to beat him senseless as retribution for his past offenses. "We disagree as to what to do with Neville," Mitchell says.
14. California name-drop: Monday's episode will tease who's in charge in California, though it's certainly left open to interpretation. "It may not be the particular person that you think," Rambo says. "Many people share that name."
15. Randall's motivations: We'll learn a lot about Randall's (Colm Feore) backstory in Monday's episode, which will reveal exactly why he's so invested in the blackout. "We're going to learn that it's very personal for Randall," Rambo says, "He has his own drama. He has big plans."
16. Floor 12: Randall briefly mentioned Floor 12 in an earlier episode, but it will soon play a pivotal role. "It's going to come into play throughout the entire rest of the show," Mitchell teases.
17. Flashbacks galore: Upcoming flashbacks will show when the blackout first happened and how it affected other territories around the country.
10 things to know about Revolution's return
18. Power is everything: Monroe won't go without power for long, but there are people out there who won't be happy that power exists. "We'll see how attractive power is and how destructive power is," Rambo says.
19. Madam President:24's Leslie Hope will portray the president of the Georgia Federation, which is a stark contrast from the other territories we've seen thus far. "They have a better climate, they've got better textiles, they've got a mall," Rambo says. "She's a good leader and she really likes our people." She'll apparently really like Miles... naturally.
20. Finale scoop: It's safe to say that the finale is heading toward an ultimate showdown between Miles and Monroe. Mitchell calls it one of her favorite scenes of the season.
Revolution airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC.
View original 20 Spoilers We Learned from the Revolution Panel at WonderCon at TVGuide.com
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subset: commoncrawl


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A non- abrasive dry polishing floor pad for slow speed floor machines. The White-Polish pad will level scratches for a high luster
Current Reviews: 0
This product was added to our catalog on Monday 28 October, 2013.
Details: White -Polish floor pad
A non- abrasive dry polishing floor pad for slow speed floor machines. The White-Polish pad will level scratches for a high luster
Current Reviews: 0
This product was added to our catalog on Monday 28 October, 2013.
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TV Show Recaps - Dancing with the Stars Episode Recap: Monday, Nov. 4, 2013
It's the moment we've all been waiting for on Season 17 of Dancing with the Stars: CherNight! The legendary singer/actress is in the house as both a guest judge and a performer, and kicks off the evening with a somewhat stilted rendition of "Believe." Am I the only one who was a little amused by her minimal movements, considering that this is, at the end of the day, a dance show? She looked like me the day after running the New York City marathon. (I kid - I would never run a marathon.) Regardless, she still looks and sounds great - with likely a little backing track help, let's be honest - and her presence alone definitely takes the episode up a notch.
It's also the first night of dance-offs, where couples will compete head-to-head. So let's - oh, what's that? Val is apparently trying to impress Cher right off the bat, and seems to have lost his shirt during the journey from the backstage area to the ballroom. Sigh. To the dances!
Corbin Bleu & Karina Smirnoff (Argentine Tango)
Kicking off the night are Corbin and Karina, with Karina resembling a shimmery Cleopatra ("It looks like the Mirrorball melted on your head," Tom notes). They're dancing to a song from the Cher/Christina Aguilera cinematic masterpiece Burlesque, so I guess it's fitting. Corbin seems to have just the slightest difficulty with a lengthy lift in the middle of the song, and it really seems like Karina is doing most of the work here. But it's still an impressive number. Corbin is definitely the frontrunner at this point, no? Karina's smooch at the end of the dance leaves a lipstick mark on his nose, ha. Carrie Ann says his footwork could have been a little smoother. Cher misses her paddle cue. She'll get the hang of it.
Score: 27
Leah Remini & Tony Dovolani (Viennese waltz)
Aw. Leah and Tony pick "I Got You Babe" for their song because Leah is obsessed with Sonny and Cher's meet-cute in a Los Angeles coffee shop. And she's really stepping up her game! I have to say, this is the first week where Leah looks like she's having an unabashed good time on the floor. Her movements are fluid and more confident than we've seen from her in past weeks, and she looks absolutely thrilled when the number is over. Even J-Lo is crying in the audience! Bruno reminds Leah to hold her lifts. Carrie Ann says the lifts were fine, but the timing was a little off. Cher seems genuinely touched at Leah's interpretation of her love at first sight moment.
Score: 25
Brant Daugherty & Peta Murgatroyd (Foxtrot)
Brant and Peta lose a couple of days of rehearsal this week with Brant being back on the set of Pretty Little Liars. Their foxtrot is sharp, although it seems like Peta resorts to a lot of spins in the absence of more complicated choreography, and even I got a little dizzy watching all of them. The number ends with Peta planting a wet one on Brant's lips (the song is "It's in His Kiss," after all). Carrie Ann tells Brant that he has the most star potential of the contestants, but says he needs to finesse some of his lines and make sure his knees aren't turning in. Bruno concurs. Cher's judging strategy appears to be: just give everyone a 9.
Score: 27
Elizabeth Berkley & Val Chmerkovskiy (Jazz)
Elizabeth's last-minute song change to "Bang Bang" puts extra pressure on herself and Val during rehearsals, so let's see if they can pull it off. Val's shirt is still M.I.A. Their red light special of a dance is sensual and violent, just like the song, and Elizabeth even seems to take control at certain points. "I like the rough part of it," Cher says. (She's trying.) Then she adds something that gets bleeped by the censors, but draws a huge round of applause from the crowd. Anyone care to guess what the comment was? "It was like the Hunger Games!" Bruno adds, which sends Cher into a fit of laughter, but he also notes that Elizabeth missed several musical cues. Carrie Ann calls the dance "one-dimensional." Ouch.
Score: 25
Bill Engvall & Emma Slater (Disco)
Ladies and gentlemen, meet Bill "Disco Duck" Engvall! Bill, who was so excited (but not so scared) to be dancing in front of his "fantasy girl" Cher, really pulls out all the stops this week. All of a sudden I am transported to 1975 at Studio 54 with Mr. Engvall. And I love it. He's totally got this - well, minus spinning Emma around by his neck, where he looks like he may have pulled a muscle. But the dance is fun and lighthearted and a real pick-me-up for the night. Bruno compares Bill to John Travolta (in spirit). "You're like the mayor of Dancing with the Stars," Carrie Ann tells him. "You were off the beat, but I still loved it." Cher notes: "I was amazed that you could get her up in all those positions." Bill's response? "It's a little blue pill." HA! Cher - perhaps not amused? - breaks form and hands out an 8.
Score: 24
Jack Osbourne & Cheryl Burke (Tango)
It's pretty adorable to see how into Dancing with the Stars Jack is getting, after expecting it to be "the cheesiest experience" of his life. He and Cheryl have a lot to live up to after their 10 last week. Jack again looks like he's concentrating extra hard this week, and misses a head turn (as Carrie Ann notes later). But he's more or less okay from the neck down, with sharp kicks and smooth movements. "You're like a tango-dancing pimp," Cher tells him.
Score: 27
Amber Riley & Derek Hough (Rumba)
Amber says she checked into the hospital this week with an injury. Can she muddle through it? Derek starts their routine off in a sailor costume, but that doesn't last long as he pulls a Val and sheds his shirt. Their hip swivels are sultry (Derek's in particular), but whether its due to Amber's injury or something else, she keeps her footwork to a minimum - and a super-slow one, at that. The dance also seems slightly mismatched to the song. "Not your best dance," according to Carrie Ann, but the duo inexplicably manage to pull out the best score of the night.
Score: 28
With Derek and Amber in the lead with 28, they're automatically immune and won't have to participate in the dance-off. Before we get to that, there's another performance from Cher, who looks to be wearing a flock of dead crows on her head as she sings her new ballad "I Hope You Find It." Oh, and Chaz is in the audience! I wonder how their tutoring session went.
The way the dance-off works: The top two couples get to pick which couple they're dancing against, and that couple gets to choose the type of dance.
After Derek and Amber, the second place couple (based on cumulative scores) is Corbin and Karina. They choose to go up against Elizabeth and Val, who opt for the cha-cha.
Corbin and Karina go first, and again, Corbin is so on point that it's hard to tell which one is the pro and which is the star with these two. Elizabeth and Val's dance is also pretty impressive, but Corbin and Karina are just so good that they're hard to top. It's unanimous from the judges, too: Corbin and Karina win the contest.
Next up is Brant and Peta, who choose to compete against Leah and Tony. Leah and Tony pick the Rumba.
For Round 2, Leah and Tony are a lot more subdued compared to Brant and Peta, who are tight and controlled while performing at a much faster pace. However, Carrie Ann points out that the rumba is the "dance of love," and Leah nailed it. Cher and Carrie Ann vote for Leah and Tony, while Bruno sides with Brant and Peta.
Time for Round 3, the disco. Jack and Cheryl look great in their coordinated outfits, and their spin at the end is particularly impressive, but disco is Bill's game all the way - and they bust out a spin of their own at the end! However, the judges seem a little biased towards Jack and Cheryl, noting that Bill had just done a disco an hour ago. Again, it's unanimous: Jack and Cheryl. But, Tom immediately reveals that Bill and Emma are still safe! Bill shrieks.
Now, on to the elimination.
Safe: Elizabeth and Val, Corbin and Karina, Leah and Tony
In Jeopardy: Jack and Cheryl, Brant and Peta
Eliminated: Brant and Peta
What did you think? How did Cher do as a guest judge? Are you surprised that Brant and Peta were sent home? Which was your favorite dance of the night? Who do you think are the frontrunners at this point? Weigh in below!
View original Dancing with the Stars Episode Recap: Monday, Nov. 4, 2013 at TVGuide.com
Other Links From TVGuide.com


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We have hit the point where the previous gifts are useful for the current gifts. Today is a dual set: the
comb method and the idea of constraints.
Similar to the static types previous defined, constraints allow fine control in writing subroutines and methods. In many other programming languages, you have to pass parameters into a subroutine and then validate the input that comes in. With constraints, you can do the validation right in the declaration.
Take this basic example. If the integer is even, I don't want to deal with this subroutine. In Perl 5, it would be written something similar to this:
sub very_odd { my $odd = shift; unless ($odd % 2) { return undef; } # Process the odd number here. }
In Perl 6, this can be simplified thusly:
sub very_odd(Int $odd where {$odd % 2}) { # Process the odd number here }
If you attempt to call very_odd with an even number, you will get an error. Do not fret though: you can use the multi sub functionality to give even numbers a chance to shine…maybe. ;)
multi sub very_odd(Int $odd where {$odd % 2}) { # Process the odd number here } multi sub very_odd(Int $odd) { return Bool::False; }
These constraints can be useful when paired with the
.comb method. What exactly is
.comb? For those that brush their own hair, you generally use a comb to get the strands you want and settle them somewhere on your head. For those that like using
.split, it's the opposite: instead of separating a
Str by what you don't want, you separate it by what you do. This simple piece of code should demonstrate that:
say "Perl 6 Advent".comb(/<alpha>/).join('|'); say "Perl 6 Advent".comb(/<alpha>+/).join('|');
Regex patterns will most likely be covered another day, but a quick preview won't hurt. The first line will print
P|e|r|l|A|d|v|e|n|t: it gets every alphabetic character and puts it into a temporary array. It is then joined together with the pipe character. The second line is similar, only it grabs as many alphabetic characters as it can, resulting in
The power of
.comb is much more, however. Once you have combed out what you wanted, you can manipulate the strands. If you have a basic string of ASCII hex characters, you can use the hyperoperators to change each piece into the ASCII equivalent!
say "5065726C36".comb(/<xdigit>**2/)».fmt("0x%s")».chr # Outputs "Perl6"
For those intimidated by that, you can find also use the
.map method.
say "5065726C36".comb(/<xdigit>**2/).map: { chr '0x' ~ $_ } ; # Outputs "Perl6"
Remember, this is Perl. There is more than one way to do it. ☺
With all of the gifts that have been presented today, I now have a challenge for all of you. With the assistance of Kyle Hasselbacher, I was able to make a decent version of the ancient Caesar Cipher using constraints,
.comb, and the old style
use v6; sub rotate_one( Str $c where { $c.chars == 1 }, Int $n ) { return $c if $c !~~ /<alpha>/; my $out = $c.ord + $n; $out -= 26 if $out > ($c eq $c.uc ?? 'Z'.ord !! 'z'.ord); return $out.chr; } sub rotate(Str $s where {$s.chars}, Int $n = 3) { return ($s.comb.map: { rotate_one( $_, $n % 26 ) }).join( '' ); } die "Usage:\n$*PROGRAM_NAME string number_for_rotations" unless @*ARGS == 2; my Str $mess = @*ARGS[0]; my Int $rotate = @*ARGS[1].Int; say qq|"$mess" rotated $rotate characters gives "{rotate($mess,$rotate)}".|;
I would like to see how the rest of you can code this algorithm using Perl 6 and the gifts so far. After all, the language can only get better with more usage.


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Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg, if you prefer) in 1862. It represents the bloodiest one-day battle in American history with over 23,000 casualties on both sides. Ethan Rafuse provides a wonderful post on this subject, complete with the opening to the film Glory (1989), which began with this battle.
He also noted the letter from Lt Col. Wilder Dwight, who died from wounds at the battle and the letter he wrote was featured in the documentary Death and the Civil War, which I reviewed earlier.
This battle was significant for several reasons. One was that it allowed Lincoln to justify the Emancipation Proclamation, as the tactical draw served as a psychological and strategic victory for the Union, aiding in a small way in keeping the European powers out of the conflict, though this was largely accomplished by this point in 1862.
Also, it was a major setback for Robert E. Lee, as his invasion of the North failed. It represented a series of missed opportunities and blunders that could have ended the war sooner, had McClellan acted more decisively upon finding Lee's Special Order 191, which was his battle plan, or had McClellan pursued and destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia after the battle.
Though, 150 years old, this battle is still an important event in our history, worthy of continuing staff rides by military educational programs around the country. One of the better books on the battle that is both scholarly and great for a general audience is James McPherson's Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, The Battle That Changed the Course of the Civil War (2002), as it discusses the larger significance of the battle as well as how it relates to the concept of freedom at the time. As we approach the anniversaries of some of the most important battles of the war, it will be notable to see how we reflect and what historians write and do to understand the importance of these events against our modern society.


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Orthodox church members strike two evangelical worship buildings, beat evangelist unconscious.
NAIROBI, Kenya, April 15 (CDN) — Evangelical Christians in an area of Ethiopia unaccustomed to anti-Christian hostility have come under attack from Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC) members threatened by their existence, Christian leaders said.
In Olenkomi, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) west of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, two church buildings were attacked by an EOC mob in Olenkomi town, Oromia Region, on Jan. 27 – leaving one evangelist unconscious and other Christians fearful of Orthodox hostility. Area Christians fear the assailants will not face justice due to the EOC's powerful presence and impending elections.
A Mekane Yesus Church building was destroyed in the assault, while a Brethren Church structure suffered damages.
Attacks against evangelicals in the area are rare, but recently Christians have come under immense pressure as they face isolation and verbal threats, church leaders said. Located in the West Shoa Zone of Oromia Region, Olenkomi is a small town where most people there and in surrounding areas belong to the EOC. All officials in government are EOC members, and evangelical Christians encounter difficulties obtaining land for church buildings, church leaders said.
The attack followed an accidental fire from liturgical candles that burned an EOC building. EOC members blamed evangelicals, and in the ensuing assault evangelist Abera Ongeremu was so badly beaten the mob left him for dead. Another three Christians also sustained minor injuries.
Ongeremu was visiting from Neqemite, 260 kilometers (161 miles) away. After the mob stoned the Brethren Church, they next targeted Mekane Yesus Church, where Ongeremu was staying in guest quarters. A member of the mob took a Bible from his guest room and told him to burn it.
"How can I burn the book that showed me life?" the shocked Ongeremu asked.
He said that he told the mob that they could do anything they wanted, but he was not going to burn the Holy Bible. The attackers tied his hands and legs together and threw him back into the room, sprinkling diesel on the walls and roof and locking him in before setting it on fire, he said.
"I thought it was my last," Ongeremu said. "I now understand nothing will happen to you without the will of God. That was not the day God allowed for me to die."
Some of the assailants argued that Ongeremu should not die by burning, but by beating. Two of them dragged him out of the room and continuously beat him, covering his face in blood. He sustained wounds on his skull and right arm.
"After repeated beatings I lost consciousness," he said. "I didn't know how and when they left me. I only recall they argued about how to kill me."
Federal police were summoned from Ambo – the nearest town some 50 kilometers (31 miles) away – to disperse the mob, but too late to avert the injuries and damages after their rugged journey of nearly three hours.
Prior to the attacks, according to church leaders, there was no substantial build-up of tension between the two groups, though EOC priests had expressed anger about the expansion of evangelical churches and had questioned why teachers from evangelical backgrounds were prevalent in the high school in Olenkomi.
Most of the teachers at Olenkomi Secondary High School are evangelical Christians, according to church leaders, who said this circumstance was solely coincidental. Although teachers of evangelical faith are prevalent in the school, they are forbidden by law to promote their faith in class.
The EOC members had been constructing a building for a church in Olenkomi, but because of funding shortfalls they revised the plan and built a temporary structure. Evangelical church leaders said EOC priests had seized the land without formal process, but sources said the EOC's strong presence in the area kept evangelical church officials from protesting brazen construction efforts.
The EOC's small structure was being used for liturgical purposes.
"The shelter-like house has faced fire disaster in various incidents," said a church leader in Olenkomi. "The materials used to build it, and the curtains they hung on walls exposed the shelter to several fire incidents. The [candle and lantern] lights the priests used for liturgy were causing problems. We heard that a number of times the fire had lit curtains, and the priests stopped before it spread."
Such a fire broke out on the day of the attack, this time out-pacing the frantic efforts of the priests. The fire consumed curtains inside the house and spread to roofs and walls. To douse it the priests went to a nearby government-owned water tank operated by an evangelical woman. She granted them water, and the structure did not burn entirely.
When they later returned to wash, however, they put their hands inside the tank and sullied the public water source. When the operator objected, the EOC members spoke derogatorily of her as a "Pente" and began to spread the rumor that she was responsible for the burnt structure, church leaders said.
EOC members quickly formed into groups of various sizes, sources said, and rolled into town chanting, "This is the day to destroy Pentecostals and their churches!" They first went to the Brethren Church, located by the side of a highway that stretches through Olenkomi to western Ethiopia.
"When we first heard stones falling on the roof, we thought the wind was tearing up iron sheets," said one evangelist. "We also heard a loud noise from outside. It was around 12:30 p.m. I opened the main door to check what was happening. The whole compound was filled by men and women who carried stones and sticks. It was a very scary sight."
They were stoning the church building, forcing the praying believers to escape through a back door. The assailants continued breaking doors and windows, thinking worshippers were trapped inside.
Local police arrived, the evangelist said, but they failed to disperse the violent mob.
"Despite firing into the air, the officers didn't do anything serious to stop the mob," he said. "They later said it is beyond their capacity and would call Federal Police from Ambo town. The anti-riot police arrived two and half hours later, practically after the mob effectively carried out all the destruction."
Of the attack on Mekane Yesus Church, one church leader said the mob broke in and set fire on everything they found.
"They gathered benches, office chairs and tables, documents, musical instruments, public address system, choir uniforms and other materials and set them on fire," he said. "They also lit fire to the church building, which reduced it to ashes."
The mob was not finished. They proceeded to the high school, where they attacked Christian teachers as students rushed to defend them. Church leaders said the targeting of the school was evidence that the attack had been planned before with well-considered aims.
With Ethiopia scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on May 23, government officials don't want to upset voters by punishing those behind the attacks, church leaders said. It is likely that officials would pressure church leaders from both camps to settle for the sake of stability, but Christians fear that in doing so their complaints will be overlooked.
Some suspects have been identified, but church leaders don't expect they will be punished.
"It is like hitting a fire ball," said a church leader from Brethren Church. "When you hit the fire, it would round back to you. It can even burn you. You may also distribute the fire to new places."
In spite of the violence, evangelical Christians have engaged in "fervent witnessing ministry and prayer," he said.
"It awakens us to think, pray and unite," he said. "There is no good in persecution. But God turned it around for the good of us. The persecution was intended to destroy our commitment, but it rather built our faith."
As election day draws closer, said the leader, EOC priests could easily motivate followers to attack.
"That would be bad times for believers," he said. "Let's pray for people in Olenkomi to know the will of God and repent from evil from which they assume to serve God."
Report from Compass Direct News


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Oliver jumps from 'Daily' to HBO's 'Last Week Tonight'
NEW YORK -- When the time comes for a young bird to leave the nest, he's often more than ready to go and doesn't care too much what Papa Bird thinks.
The analogy doesn't apply to John Oliver, the former "Daily Show" featured player who debuts his new HBO topical series at 11 p.m. Sunday. He's extremely loyal to Jon Stewart, recognizes Stewart's role in giving him the opportunity to get ahead, and sought the Comedy Central host's blessing to move to HBO.
"I have a pretty intense debt to him," Oliver, whose show is called "Last Week Tonight," says. "I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for him."
Stewart's role as a comedy kingmaker has never been more clear than this month, with Oliver starting the new show and another ex-"Daily Show" correspondent, Stephen Colbert, earning the coveted honor of succeeding David Letterman when the "Late Show" host retires next year.
Oliver, a native of Britain who was always interested in topical comedy, admired Stewart's show from afar and in 2006 applied for and earned a job on the "Daily Show." His path to HBO began last year, when Stewart called and said he was taking the summer off to produce a movie. Would Oliver mind filling in as guest host for a couple of months?
He hung up and his legs went weak. Oliver's wife didn't help much when he recounted the conversation and she said, "Oh, that's risky."
She was right. But her husband nailed it, keeping a formidable machine running smoothly and establishing a comic personality of his own: more bemused and less neurotic or angry than Stewart.
Oliver says he really
didn't have a sense of how well it was going until Charlie Rose was a guest toward the end of his tenure. The CBS newsman said the audience had loved him. Had he thought about his next step?
"That was the first time I'd heard that," Oliver says. "He looked at me like I was a complete moron. My
only barometer for going well was Jon not being mad at me when he came back."
His phone offered more clues. Offers for work started coming in. It was Oliver's moment of opportunity, and both he and Stewart recognized it. HBO offered prestige and creative freedom to build a show as he saw fit, so Oliver signed on.
It's hard to describe something that hasn't been on the air yet, but "Last Week Tonight" seems to be an apt title. Oliver will give a comedic take on stories in the news. It sounds similar to the "Daily Show," but he realizes his challenge will be to take on topics that Stewart and Colbert haven't already done, along with not making the telecast seem dated by the time it goes on the air.
Another challenge -- again, one that may become moot once "Last Week Tonight" is up and operating -- is for Oliver not to let his respect for Stewart and the "Daily Show" lead him into making a program that feels like a pale imitation.
"John Oliver does bring something kind of different," Jonathan Gray, a
media and cultural studies professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, says. "The 'Daily Show' is primarily about American politics and so much about John Oliver's shtick reminds you that he's not an American. It's not the insider humor of Stewart. It's more of an outsider's observations. Sometimes they may look similar, but I think it can allow for a different kind of comic sensibility."
Oliver, 37, is clearly aware of how dangerous it can be for an outsider to make jokes about Americans. He defuses any worries with a self-deprecatory attitude.
"I clearly love it here," he says, "because I live here out of choice. You can't really talk about anything that America has done without acknowledging that Britain had already done it much worse hundreds of years ago."
Afghanistan, for instance. Britain had its own failed invasions long before the American military went there to hunt for terrorists, he noted.
"It helps to be an outsider to comment on things," Oliver says. "You don't want to be in the party that you're commenting upon. You want to be outside, saying 'that party is bull.' "
Oliver probably would have been a good choice to fill Comedy Central's 11:30 p.m. hour on weekdays with Colbert set to leave next year. The timing was lousy; Oliver was already working on "Last Week Tonight" when Letterman announced his retirement. It may turn out to be a positive, because the end of "The Colbert Report" will mean one less competitor in the topical field.
That's for the future. Oliver's more immediate challenge is to get his old
"Daily Show" fans to check out "Last Week Tonight."
"If you enjoyed me last summer and you don't watch, then I'm in serious trouble," he says.


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This week the topic is Things Found on a Farm.
This is a topic you can really have enjoy. Let's see how creative you can get. I'm looking forward to what you all decide to post. I just want you to have some fun with your photography.
Upcoming Topics
For a list of upcoming topics, please see the list below. Be creative and challenge yourself. For a great black and white photo look for contrast or highly textured subjects to photograph.
- Side of things
- Tree art
- Indoor Walkways, Hallways, Elevators
- Things Found in a Kitchen
- Numbers: Anything with numbers on it
- Bricks or Stones
This challenge accepts the following types of photography:
- Black and white photography
- Sepia tones (browns)
- Selective color with the majority of the photo being in black and white
- Desaturated – very little color tone left in your photo
I hope you have FUN a lot of fun with this challenge.
For more information on this challenge, please visit the Black & White Challenge page.
- Then add a link to your blog in my comment box.
- To make it easy for others to check out your photos and post, title your blog post "Cee's Black & White Photo Challenge" or (CB&W) tag.
- Remember to Follow My Blog to get your weekly reminders.
I usually will respond to your entry on your blog, rather than on my page.
Save the button to your computer and upload from there.
Still have questions? Please contact me.
I've put together a list of challenges and their hosts. So if you know a challenge host, please direct them to my blog. Feel free to contact me anytime. I hope everyone will be able to use my lists.
Qi (energy) hugs


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Orthodox denominations face discrimination from authorities, nominally Christian gatekeepers.
HAIFA, Israel, July 8 (Compass Direct News) – Here in Israel's third-largest city, it was not possible for the Russian Orthodox relatives of a 65-year-old woman who died on June 27 to find a Christian cemetery for her.
Their plight – for five days the body of Nadejda Edelman was stored at a hospital morgue – is common to Christians of foreign ancestry throughout the country. When Edelman passed away in Rambam Medical Center in this northern Israeli city, it took almost a week to find a grave for her and arrange for a funeral. Haifa, with 265,000 people, is 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of Tel Aviv.
On July 1 Edelman, a devout Christian, was buried outside of Haifa in Emeq Hefer Local Council Cemetery – a "secular" site for persons of no faith tradition. Had there been a Christian cemetery available, Edelman's family might still have had problems obtaining a plot; the immigrant had not been able to have her ID registered as "Christian," only as "Russian."
"A cross on her neck and a testimony on her behalf by her close friend, as Edelman was childless, didn't convince the authorities, and even if it would have, there are just no existing solutions for the deceased Russian Orthodox Christians of Russian origin in Israel," said one of the founders of Sophia, an association of Russian Orthodox Christians in northern Israel. He requested anonymity.
Throughout Israel it's not unusual for delays of days or weeks for burial of the Christian deceased of foreign ancestry. One Christian, Sergei Loper, was not buried until 20 days after his death; for another, Yuri Neverdasov, an available grave was not found for five days.
Christians make up 2.1 percent of Israel's population, and the Orthodox denominations are a fraction of that. The issue of funeral rites and burials in Israel is especially difficult for these minorities, given the country's complicated ethnic and religious makeup and laws that give religious institutions control over personal matters such as weddings, births and deaths.
The faith communities of Jews and Arabs in Israel each have their own designated burial societies that are responsible for arranging burials as well as religious rituals. Jewish burial societies called Hevra Kadisha are responsible for the Jewish deceased, while Arab burial societies provide services for Arab Muslims and Christians.
Such societies must obtain a special permit from the Ministry of Religious Affairs and sign a contract with the Social Security Service; this latter agency then covers the cost of burial fees in accordance with Israeli law. In theory every family in Israel is entitled to this reimbursement, but Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox families miss out because the funds go to the Arab burial societies rather than directly to the survivors.
Problems in addressing foreigners' needs began in the early 1990s with a massive wave of immigration from the Former Soviet Union. Along with Jewish relatives, many Christians, Muslims and non-religious emigrants from Russia settled in Israel. Soon authorities were hard-pressed to address the needs of children of mixed marriages and of non-Jewish spouses and relatives – some with religious backgrounds other than Judaism, some holding no defined religious views and some who were atheists.
The question of foreign (especially Russian) Christians, as well as that of Jews who openly declared their conversion to Christianity, was especially disturbing, and Israel initially dealt with it by registering many people only as "Russians" without any reference to their religious belief. Later the religious designation for all people was eliminated from Israeli identification cards.
With legislation that was passed in 1992 but took more than a decade to implement, eventually authorities worked out a partial solution – establishing a few secular cemeteries and creating sections within Jewish cemeteries for "non-religious persons." These measures did not meet the needs of people who wished to be buried in accordance with their religious beliefs, especially the Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Christians.
Discrimination against Non-Arabs
The Sophia association has tried to address this complicated issue and assist members of the Russian Orthodox community and their families. Thus far authorities have little heeded their plea.
"It would be only natural if Christians would be buried in Christian cemeteries, yet the Arab local councils usually decline our requests," said Dr. Ilya Litvin of Haifa, a member of Sophia.
In Israel's Arab Christian cemeteries, the heads of local councils are the only ones entitled to make the decisions, but many of them are Christians by birth only; they belong to Communist parties and in reality have little sympathy for religious sentiment, advocates said.
"They claim that there is a severe shortage of graves there and little possibility for expansion, yet I believe that it's just politics," Litvin said. "They don't really care about us – we are not Arabs."
Oleg Usenkov, press-secretary of St. Nicolay's church at Migdal ha-Emeq, added that a Christian burial may sometimes come only as a negotiated favor.
"Sometimes our priest, Father Roman Radwan, pulls personal connections and after some negotiations they allocate a grave for the deceased members of our community, but usually we hear a 'No,'" he said.
Other options for the church are the non-Jewish section at the Jewish cemetery or the secular cemetery. It is usually not possible, however, to conduct Christian ceremonies at these sites.
Usenkov of St. Nicolay's church said he vividly recalls a recent funeral of his friend Andrey Shelkov.
"The funeral was organized by the Jerusalemite Hevra Kadisha [Jewish burial society], and we were not even allowed to put a cross inside the coffin," Usenkov said. "One of the Hevra Kadisha workers felt sorry for us and told me, 'You can draw a Pisces [fish symbol] on his arm and put it inside the coffin, isn't that a Christian symbol as well?' Imagine that: having to draw a Pisces, just like the early Christians who had to hide their faith!"
Burials can be costly, and the Israeli Social Security Service covers burial fees only by transferring the compensation to the burial societies, not to the families of the deceased. Since there is no such burial society for Russian Orthodox Christians, state funds to cover the high costs go to local councils' treasuries rather than to the families.
The leaders of Sophia have requested the office of Israel's prime minister to give their association status similar to that of a Hevra Kadisha, which would allow Sophia to meet the burial needs of Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Christians, but to no avail.
"In reply we received a formal letter which offers no solution," said Litvin. "The letter suggested that we should somehow obtain a cemetery, and that then we were to apply to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for the license – which is practically impossible, and everyone knows it."
A written inquiry by Compass to the social security office elicited the same response.
"We feel helpless and frustrated: the heads of Greek Orthodox Church choose not to interfere, or maybe they can't, while the Israeli authorities are brushing us off," Litvin said. "As a result, innocent people are denied of their basic right – to be buried according to their religious beliefs. Some of them are childless and poor, and there is no one to stand up for their rights. We hope that someone will take responsibility for this issue."
Report from Compass Direct News


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Movie review: 'Red 2' isn't perfect, but it's fun
Very cute, very violent. Now, those are four words you don't usually see strung together in a movie review. But they perfectly describe "Red 2." It's a cracking good sequel to the 2010 action comedy about former government agents who are now "RED," or "retired, extremely dangerous." And it does exactly what a film like this is supposed to do.
It picks up, at some indeterminate time after the original, and follows the continuing adventures of a group of people we really liked the first time around. They're pushed off into a new story, but the script switches into comfort mode by getting them to do some of the same quirky things they did before. Yet there's enough freshness here to make us hope there'll be a third entry somewhere down the road.
But back to that cute and violent business, which is introduced, in tandem, at the get-go. Say hello, again, to tough-as-nails Frank and innocent little Sarah (Bruce Willis and Mary-Louise Parker), now a lovey-dovey couple who have become real homebodies. Well, at least he has. Frank is thrilled to have his killing days behind him. But Sarah might be missing some of that excitement she tasted when she first met Frank. Before the film has a chance of turning saccharine, it reintroduces Marvin (John Malkovich), Frank's crazy coot of an old pal, who is a brilliant marksman but is still feeling the effects some long-ago and extensive government-sponsored LSD experiments done to him.
Cue the explosions, cue the gunfire, then introduce a plot that makes the government look even worse when our heroes are labeled terrorists who must be hunted down. But don't let the audience forget, even when gun-crazy Brit MI6 agent Victoria (Helen Mirren) and treacherous Korean hitman Han (Byung-hun Lee, new to the franchise) are hired to do the hunting, that throughout it all, Frank and Sarah are crazy over each other. This is put to the test a bit when Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a Russian agent and old flame of Frank's, enters the picture. But that character, along with Zeta-Jones' flat acting, takes up too much air and space in what would otherwise have been a tighter movie.
The film is actually a little more complicated than it needs to be. The central premise involves a decades-old weapon that at one time could have done major damage to the world and, it turns out, still can. Dubbed Project Nightshade, and created by a genius who was either good or evil, the weapon has gone missing, and a whole lot of people, from all different corners of the planet, are searching for it.
In a film of this sort, that kind of plotting also means that everyone is trying to kill everyone else, with Frank, Sarah, and Marvin most often in others' crosshairs. But the script never strays far from leaning on its comic edge. Despite the danger, there are plenty of wisecracks, along with some outright loopy comedy from the often confused-looking Marvin. While he remains the film's major comic relief, Parker is spot-on in lightening things up just by displaying her misplaced excitement and zeal when, for instance, she gets her hands on a gun and doesn't really know what to do with it.
Any fashionistas in the audience will enjoy the fact that practically everyone in the film (with the exception of Marvin) is stylishly dressed, and fans of actors who know how to overdo things in exactly the right way will enjoy the spirited, highly energetic performance by Anthony Hopkins as Bailey (especially when he utters the oh-so-British phrase "Jolly good" twice!).
There are plot twists galore, many of which get very creative late in the film, and though the story gets overcomplicated, the direction is so fluid, it's quite easy to take it all in.
Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now.
Written by Jon Hoeber and Eric Hoeber; directed by Dean Parisot
With Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Anthony Hopkins
Rated PG-13


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Mozilla announced today that it will follow the lead of Microsoft, Google, and Apple and implement support for the contentious HTML5 digital rights management specification called Encrypted Media Extensions (EME).
The organization is partnering with Adobe to make the change. Mozilla will provide the hooks and APIs in Firefox to enable Web content to manipulate DRM-protected content, and Adobe will provide a closed source Content Decryption Module (CDM) to handle the decryption needs.
For a group that's committed to open standards and open source, this was a difficult decision. DRM, which tends to restrict fair use access to copyrighted content, and closed source modules both run counter to Mozilla's goals. Explaining the decision, Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker argued that the decision was driven by necessity. With Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari all enabling EME, Mozilla faced a problem: if it refused to support EME, it risked driving users seeking to watch DRM-protected content to other browsers.
That streaming media companies want to use EME is beyond doubt. Netflix, for example, offers an HTML5-based player using EME as an alternative to its Silverlight-based front-end. This HTML5 player works in both Chrome and Internet Explorer 11. Baker argues that users will tend to follow the content and hence switch to these browsers whenever they want to watch protected content. This in turn leads those users to question the use of Firefox entirely.
This push for HTML5 and EME is likely to accelerate, too. Google is trying to deprecate support for browser plugins, a move that will, in time, eliminate both Silverlight and Flash as delivery mechanisms for DRM-protected content. For broadcasters that want to target the Web, EME will be the only practical option. This will increase the pressure faced by Mozilla.
As much as Mozilla as an organization may dislike DRM, and as much as it may believe the EME specification to be flawed, Baker says that Mozilla cannot change the industry alone. As such, it needs to support DRM, too. The choice of whether to use the DRM facilities will be left to the end user, and those who do not want to use it can elect not to activate it. The CDM will not actually be distributed with Firefox, either; if users elect to use it, it will be downloaded from Adobe.
In a more technical post, Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal outlines some of the ways that the Firefox developers have tried to isolate the Adobe CDM to ensure that this closed source black box cannot breach user privacy or undermine system security. The CDM is run in an isolated sandbox without access to the network or the user's hard drive.
HTML5's DRM system also includes a unique identifier that content providers can use to identify devices. Mozilla has taken pains to make this as minimally invasive as possible. Firefox will give each site a unique ID, preventing providers from tracking users across multiple sites. The ID will also not disclose any details of the underlying hardware.
As a silver lining, Gal writes that implementing EME will make it easier for Mozilla to phase out support for general purpose plugins, as HTML5 DRM eliminates one of the biggest use cases for these plugins.
In some ways, the DRM issue mirrors the earlier video codec issue. For a long time, Mozilla refused to implement support for H.264-encoded video because of the licensing and patent issues associated with that compression algorithm. But driven by the need to play back the video that was abundant on the Web—and the battery efficiency that comes from leveraging hardware-accelerated H.264 playback—the group eventually relented.
There are some similarities in the way Mozilla has chosen to resolve the issue, too. For H.264 support, Firefox defers to third-party code that's often closed source: the built-in H.264 codecs available on Windows and OS X and the hardware support found in the chips used in tablets and smartphones.
In both cases, Mozilla found itself unable to change the direction of media industry juggernauts. DRM, like H.264, is entrenched in the video industry, and the proliferation of apps strongly suggests that content producers would sooner give up the Web before giving up content protection. Combined with a userbase that seems largely indifferent to the concerns raised—Netflix users are demonstrably willing to use DRM, for example—Mozilla's leverage is minimal at best.
This is not to say that the organization has not tried. Mozilla has pushed watermarking as a superior alternative to DRM, but this approach seems to have done little to interest content owners. Without some large user-driven pushback against DRM, it's hard to see this situation changing.


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This three-part series is based on Michael Pollan's recent article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Part I describe the puzzling fact that a hyper-processed and heavily packaged hostess Twinkie is cheaper than a bundle of "yanked from the soil" carrots. Part II helped to solve that puzzle by summarizing the role of the "farm bill" on prices and incentives — showing how "market outcomes" are contingent on the seemingly irrelevant but highly determinative regulatory backdrop — and their ill-health consequences on the American populace.
This Part (excerpting the last portion of Pollan's article) looks at the still-broader untoward effects of such laws and briefly considers what is being, and might still be, done in response.
* * *
Given all [its harmful effects], you would think the farm-bill debate would engage the nation's political passions every five years, but that hasn't been the case. If the quintennial antidrama of the "farm bill debate" holds true to form this year, a handful of farm-state legislators will thrash out the mind-numbing details behind closed doors, with virtually nobody else, either in Congress or in the media, paying much attention. Why? Because most of us assume that, true to its name, the farm bill is about "farming," an increasingly quaint activity that involves no one we know and in which few of us think we have a stake. This leaves our own representatives free to ignore the farm bill, to treat it as a parochial piece of legislation affecting a handful of their Midwestern colleagues. Since we aren't paying attention, they pay no political price for trading, or even selling, their farm-bill votes. The fact that the bill is deeply encrusted with incomprehensible jargon and prehensile programs dating back to the 1930s makes it almost impossible for the average legislator to understand the bill should he or she try to, much less the average citizen. It's doubtful this is an accident.
But there are signs this year will be different. The public-health community has come to recognize it can't hope to address obesity and diabetes without addressing the farm bill. The environmental community recognizes that as long as we have a farm bill that promotes chemical and feedlot agriculture, clean water will remain a pipe dream. The development community has woken up to the fact that global poverty can't be fought without confronting the ways the farm bill depresses world crop prices. They got a boost from a 2004 ruling by the World Trade Organization that U.S. cotton subsidies are illegal; most observers think that challenges to similar subsidies for corn, soy, wheat or rice would also prevail.
And then there are the eaters, people like you and me, increasingly concerned, if not restive, about the quality of the food on offer in America. A grass-roots social movement is gathering around food issues today, and while it is still somewhat inchoate, the manifestations are everywhere: in local efforts to get vending machines out of the schools and to improve school lunch; in local campaigns to fight feedlots and to force food companies to better the lives of animals in agriculture; in the spectacular growth of the market for organic food and the revival of local food systems. In great and growing numbers, people are voting with their forks for a different sort of food system. But as powerful as the food consumer is — it was that consumer, after all, who built a $15 billion organic-food industry and more than doubled the number of farmer's markets in the last few years — voting with our forks can advance reform only so far. It can't, for example, change the fact that the system is rigged to make the most unhealthful calories in the marketplace the only ones the poor can afford. To change that, people will have to vote with their votes as well — which is to say, they will have to wade into the muddy political waters of agricultural policy.
Doing so starts with the recognition that the "farm bill" is a misnomer; in truth, it is a food bill and so needs to be rewritten with the interests of eaters placed first. Yes, there are eaters who think it in their interest that food just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap food — to their health, to the land, to the animals, to the public purse. At a minimum, these eaters want a bill that aligns agricultural policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to produce food cleanly, sustainably and humanely. Eaters want a bill that makes the most healthful calories in the supermarket competitive with the least healthful ones. Eaters want a bill that feeds schoolchildren fresh food from local farms rather than processed surplus commodities from far away. Enlightened eaters also recognize their dependence on farmers, which is why they would support a bill that guarantees the people who raise our food not subsidies but fair prices. Why? Because they prefer to live in a country that can still produce its own food and doesn't hurt the world's farmers by dumping its surplus crops on their markets.
The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won't solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies. It will take some imaginative policy making to figure out how to encourage farmers to focus on taking care of the land rather than all-out production, on growing real food for eaters rather than industrial raw materials for food processors and on rebuilding local food economies, which the current farm bill hobbles. But the guiding principle behind an eater's farm bill could not be more straightforward: it's one that changes the rules of the game so as to promote the quality of our food (and farming) over and above its quantity.
Such changes are radical only by the standards of past farm bills, which have faithfully reflected the priorities of the agribusiness interests that wrote them. One of these years, the eaters of America are going to demand a place at the table, and we will have the political debate over food policy we need and deserve. This could prove to be that year: the year when the farm bill became a food bill, and the eaters at last had their say.
* * *
Situationist eaters of the world, UNITE!
The following video provides an illuminating (56-minute) panel discussion – "Fast Food World: Perils and Promises of the Global Food Chain" — sponsored by the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. The panelists, who were asked to assess the impact of globalization on food production and consumption, include Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Vandava Shiva, and Carlo Petrini.


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Lester Jones Death | Obituary | Lester Jones Dead | Died | Has Passed Away | Funeral Plans – We are immensely sad to hear that the above mentioned has passed away. This was made known through several notices that we came across through the social media on May 21, 2021.
We mourn with the family of Lester Jones for this great loss. Please received our heartfelt condolences.
For every start of a journey, there must be an end. The journey of the deceased has sadly come to an end on earth.
Friends, Family and loved ones are extremely sad and currently grieving as the news of Lester Jones death was made known to the public.
Cause of Death
Lester Jones cause of death has never been made public. We will surely update this news as soon as we are able to get more information regarding this.
Obituary | Funeral Arrangement | GoFundMe page
The family are yet to make public the obituary and funeral arrangements. We also not aware if any GoFundMe was created by the family or friends of the deceased at the time of this publication.
This post will be updated with more information as they are made available and public.
It is with incredible sadness and heavy hearts that we announce that our friend and colleague has passed away. Celebrate the life of the deceased, leave a kind word. Friends, Family and Loved ones has poured out their grieve and condolence to honor the passing away of the deceased.


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County handles annual contracts
County officials handled annual tax resolutions and remonumentation contracts during the Cheboygan County Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday.
In addition to approving an employment agreement for a new equalization director, the panel voted to adopt an annual resolution to designate the county treasurer to act as agent for the county to administer the Delinquent Tax Revolving Fund. It also adopted a standard resolution to borrow against anticipated delinquent 2012 real property taxes.
The purpose of the Delinquent Tax Revolving Fund is to allow the county treasurer to pay from it any delinquent real property taxes that are due and payable to the county and any school district, intermediate school district, city, township, special assessment district, the state of Michigan or any other political unit for which delinquent tax payments are due.
The Board of Commissioners also approved the annual remonumentation contracts. Remonumentation is the preserving, measuring and marking of property corners. In 2013, the state will provide a grant in the amount of $43,333 to conduct remonumentation. Professional service agreements with Granger & Associates and Fullford Surveying & Mapping were approved. Peer group service and administrative staff service agreements were also approved.
The panel also adopted the first amendment to the 2013 Elected Officials Salary & Wage Resolution, which transfers the agent fee for the Delinquent Tax Revolving Fund from the salary and wage resolution into the treasurer's base pay for 2013.
The public act that provided for the agent fee was repealed in December of 2012.
The treasurer's salary set in October of 2012 included a base salary of $59,218.12 and an agent fee of $2,316.43 for a total salary of $61,534.55. An elected official's pay cannot be decreased during their term. There is no net financial impact to the general fund.
A 3-year roof maintenance agreement with Doyle, Inc. also was approved to maintain the roof warranty on the Cheboygan County Building.
The next meeting of the Cheboygan County Board of Commissioners is set for Tuesday, Jan. 22 at 9:30 a.m. in room 135 of the Cheboygan County Building.


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Used SMART FORFOUR HATCHBACK at The Trade Centre UK
We currently have no Smart Forfour Hatchback in our Daily Specials, however we have a large selection to choose from at our car supermarkets.
Visit one of our Car Supermarkets today
Cheap Used Smart Forfour Hatchback at The Trade Centre UK
The award winning and largest independent used car supermarket in the U.K, The Trade Centre UK prides itself on providing the highest quality used cars at the very best value. We sell over 40,000 used cars every year, with the added convenience of being able to drive away your perfect car today.
Every single car undergoes a thorough 99-point vehicle safety inspection, full valet and pre-handover check, so you can trust that your new car will leave the showroom in prime condition. Furthermore, our dedicated customer service centres are open six days a week to ensure that we are always on hand for any post-sale queries or advice.
With used cars available for as little as £20 a week, we make upgrading your car easy. Each of our outlets has a dedicated car finance team, we arrange car finance for over 1000 customers every single week and we can tailor-make a deal to suit your budget, including paying off any current finance that you may have on the car that you are trading in. Why not save time and pre-arrange your car finance in just 30 seconds?
We hope that you will pay our car supermarket a visit soon and let us count you amongst the thousands of loyal customers that never buy their car anywhere else!


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We are migrating towards a new forum system located at community.teamspeak.com, as such this forum will become read-only on January 29, 2020
Need help setting up your permissions? For all TeamSpeak 3 permission system issues please use this forum.
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text:
LOS ANGELES—Federal regulators considered testimony Wednesday here at UCLA Law School on whether to allow citizens and filmmakers to legally crack DVD encryption meant to protect the discs from being copied.
Filmmakers, video mixers and others have petitioned the U.S. Copyright Office for the ability to continue to use DVD decryption tools to copy short clips of DVDs from motion pictures to put into their own films. The issue isn't whether they have a fair-use right to the material, but whether they can utilize decrypting tools to make the best reproduction for film-making purposes.
Another proposal for the first time calls for the public at large to be authorized to make copies of their own DVDs without breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which makes it unlawful to circumvent encryption technologies in items that you buy.
Earlier in the day, here at UCLA, regulators held a hearing as part of its deliberations over whether it will continue to allow Americans to jailbreak their mobile phones, and whether they will expand that right to cover tablets and video game consoles. Jailbreaking and rooting are techniques used to get past manufacturer-installed roadblocks that prevent users from having full control over their devices.
Every three years, the U.S. Copyright Office entertains requests to create temporary loopholes in the law that outlaws the circumvention of encryption technologies. The afternoon public hearing largely focused on the so-called CSS that must be cracked to make a copy of a DVD. All DMCA exemptions, which are proposed by the public, expire in three years and must be reauthorized by the Copyright Office.
Clarissa Weirick, the general counsel of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment, testified against all the decryption measures.
"If we didn't have access controls, there might be the same kind of mass piracy we've seen with unprotected music," Weirick said about the copying of DVDs, a proposal put forth by digital rights group Public Knowledge, which did not attend the hearing.
Weirick, a representative from Fox and the major motion picture studios under the Motion Picture Association of America opposed all the measures proposed in the afternoon public hearing, which included about 2 dozen members of the public in attendance.
They said that there is no need to grant the public the right to make copies of their DVDs because the studios are streaming and selling movies online now, and that the public does not own the movies they buy on DVDs. They own the license to play it on a DVD, they argued.
And when it comes to cracking encryption to make snippets out of films to be put in new films, the industry opposed reauthorizing the cracking of the DVD encryption for that purpose. The industry testified that filmmakers instead can use screen-capturing software or they can license the clips from the studios.
Filmmakers oppose that because of the poor quality of screen-capture reproduction.
(Screen-capturing does not crack encryption because it copies what is shown on a computer screen.)
Filmmaker Laurence Thrush testified that screen-capturing software turns clips into "mush."
"The fabric of reality is very important to these projects," he testified.
Jonathan McIntosh, a remix artist, was also asking the regulators to allow him to bypass circumvention that prevents the copying of streamed movies so that he may use the best picture quality available of the snippets he places in his own films. Doing so, he said, helps "to engage in a healthy public debate."
He said he has a "zero budget" when it comes to paying for a license, some of which carry clauses that forbid filmmakers from disparaging the movie.
Maria Pallante, the register of copyrights, wondered aloud:
"But I think we've heard the market is changing rapidly. Licensing options are changing. Conceivably even with a budget of zero, permission might be possible," she said.
Corynne McSherry, the intellectual property coordinator with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Pallante and other top-ranking lawyers in the U.S. Copyright Office here that granting the exemptions at issue is "not going to help pirates," so they must be granted.
Exemptions are allotted by the Copyright Office if regulators are convinced consumers are "adversely affected in their ability to make non-infringing use due to the prohibition on circumvention."
Approved exemptions by the Copyright Office must be also be sanctioned by the Librarian of Congress, currently James Billington. Regulators are not expected to make any approvals until later this year, at a date not yet disclosed.


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Redirect page
Redirect to:
This is the main page for the Fedora Ambassador Day for North America, which is a FAD-NA focused on planning future events, areas of concentration, and ambassador processes in North America. FADNA will be one day prior to FUDCON in Lawrence Kansas! Go to http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Lawrence_2013 for more information!
Proposed Accomodations
Lawrence Kansas TBD
- Our purpose is to... complete with the following primary goals:
- Make Ambadassadors more awesome
- Make contributing easier.
- primary goal
- In addition, we will attempt to complete the following secondary goals as time allows:
- Identifying the best candidates to teach new skills to (in relation to folks from other Distros- as well as other types of geeks like gamers
- Creation of local Fedora groups
- secondary goal
|Full Name
|Thursday's Dinner
|Arrival Details
|Departure Details
|Est. Travel $$
excl Hotel
|Clint Savage
|Wed 8:31PM (MCI)
|Mon 2:35PM (MCI)
|Dan Mashal
|Thu 4:32PM (Omaha, NE)
|Mon 4:57PM (Omaha,NE)
|Flying in from SJC to OMA for FUDCON/FADNA and driving down with rdieter
|Ben Williams
Planning Prerequisites
See the How to organize a FAD list; you can keep your to-do list here.
Completed work item
- Work out budget
- Decide on Dates and Location
- Arrange Facilities
- List Resources
- Local folks for driving/picking up folks, 3 nearby airports, numerous locations to choose from
- Be Somewhat Structured
- Arrange Lodging
- Arrange Refreshments
- Arrange a Social Event
- If we use 20th and Mission, an open bar event is most likely included
- Beefy Miracle cutout is needed.
- Another action item
- Another action item
Planning Prerequisite Brainstorming
- Proposed Purposes and Goals
- Help people polish some new presentations they might want to give on Fedora
- Solving logistical problems or discussing how to get new ambassadors or having more mentors
- Planning who is covering what for major events in the coming year or so
- Are there any swag/distribution issues or ideas for improving those processes
- Can ambassadors help promote Fedora things within the Fedora Project (like FADs for non-ambassadors)
- Evaluating the how-to-get involved processes/updating them then making how to videos about them :)
- Media/educational campaigns such as videos for local cable access, or even a weekly/monthly cable access show featuring open source, specifically fedora?
- Can ambassadors work more effectively with marketing or should ambassadors tackle some neglected tasks in that area
- Fix processes that are confusing or not well documented (handling funding requests, getting mentors and the whole concept of mentoring, effective use of trac instances)
- Location: Agreed from FAMNA (Tuesday Sept 25th) Day before FUDCON 2013 in Lawrence Kansas January 17, 2013
- Location: Lawrence, Kansas
- Date: 17 January 2012
- Schedule
- Participants arrive at THIS_TIME_AND_DATE
- Schedule item
- Schedule item
- Schedule item
- Participants leave at THIS_TIME_AND_DATE
- Important skills (one or more)
- skill
- skill
- skill
- Personnel (people who might fit the bill)
- Name (location, role) Confirmed? (Y/N)
- Name (location, role) Confirmed? (Y/N)
- Name (location, role) Confirmed? (Y/N)
- others?
- Other considerations
- Contributor V can offer a living room for evening social gatherings.
- Contributor W has a car and is willing to do airport pick-ups.
- Contributor X needs as much advance notice as possible.
- Contributor Y has a schedule that is better on Fridays than on Tuesdays, and prefers weekend times after 4:28 AM.
- Contributor Z is allergic to peanuts.
Local people
- Need List of people in Lawrence
- Ian Weller (hosting FUDCON)
Snacks/Beverages: Details go here.
Add work items here that we should cover. Please contribute to the proposed work product of our next Fedora Ambassador Day by adding topics important to you below.
Agenda Table - Ideas and Deliverables
|Time (duration)
|List of Ambassador marketing materials needs to give to marketing to produce, prioritized.
|Cover deliverables and ideas including: Marketing Flyer and how it can be updated; Generic slide deck template for presentations / events, Slide deck with talking points for each cycle, Laptop show, enhance generic Talking Points, rewrite elevator pitch. Discuss whether existing materials that marketing produces are useful for Ambassadors. Lots of other ideas welcome. Not sure yet on time needed.
|Robyn Bergeron
|1.5-2 hrs
|SOP / Process for handing off Marketing information to Ambassadors each cycle.
|What is the best / most effective way for Marketing to disseminate Talking Points, etc. to Ambassadors each cycle? How can we be more helpful? Work more with FAMSCo, have 2x per cycle joint meetings, other ideas? No more than one hour needed.
|Robyn Bergeron
|1 hr
|Discuss mentoring in North America
|It seems even with the amount of ambassador mentors that manatees (aka mentorees) who initiate the mentoring process do not complete the tasks in front of them. Perception? or Process? What is the issue here, and how do we fix it?
|Clint Savage MarkDude
|60-90 minutes
|I did it!
|A talk about something I did that I didn't think I could do before until I actually did it.
|Dan Mashal
|1-2 hours probably)
|Swag Procurement and Distribution
|With a couple of years under our belts doing this it is time to take a look at it from a different perspective (hindsight). Goal: Improve processes, eliminate Max (meant only in a really friendly way), keep stock, know who has stock, etc.
|45-60 minutes
|Growth of Regional Leadership
|I'm really keen to involve more people in several key areas to keep the ship moving. We have always encouraged the growth of swag producers but not so much in the distribution chain or the regional leadership itself. When is it time for new regional leadership? Is that construct still even useful? Goal: Leave with a reason to not think that if herlo, lcafiero, and ke4qqq went away we would collapse. Or put another way, leave with a plan to engage more ambassadors in the leadership process and in all other areas of FAmNA.
|45-60 minutes
|While budget "authority" has been shifting from the direction of FAmSCo in the direction of regional leadership there are some practical problems that remain. Goal: Develop a more clearly defined budget process allowing regional leaders to make meaningful budget decisions and be responsible for FAmNA spending Fedora resources in an accountable fashion.
|30-45 minutes
|The FADNA wiki pages could use review and maintenance. For example, it takes a bit of navigating to find this page. Wikis tend to experience sprawl of sorts and pages get lost. Goal: Develop ideas which will help in keeping the wiki organized and updated.
|Ivan Makfinsky (and inode0 can help)
|Event Planning
|What do you do when you have an event to organize? What are the things you need to know when you are organizing an event, whether it's representing Fedora to a LUG, or tabling at a larger expo? Goal: Have ambassadors be both knowledgable and comfortable with planning events at any level.
|2 hours (coffee included)
|How to embrace disgruntled users of other distros
|With the past/present/future unpopular changes in several distros there are a lot of long time GNU/Linux users that were/are/will be roaming the Free Landscape. How do we make ourselves stand out to these people
|Dan Mashal
|1 hour
Detailed Agenda
Wednesday, Jan 16th, 2013
- Attendees arrive.
Thursday, Jan 17th, 2013
- 9:30am - 10:00am: Introductions, Logistics, Wireless access. Review Agenda so we're all clear. (inode0, rbergeron)
- 10:00am - 12:00pm: Event Planning -- http://mspevack.fedorapeople.org/fadna2010-events-lcafiero.odp (MarkDude)
- 12:00pm - 2:00pm: Food and VRAC. (dan408)
- 2:00pm - 4:00pm: Budget, swag procurement & distribution, regional leadership growth. (inode0) (?)
- 4:00pm - 5:00pm: Wiki maintenance. (?)
Evening: Dining?
- Location: address and phone number go here.
- Google Maps link goes here
If you want funding - you will need to talk to newly formed OSAS - talk to Ruth Suehle. If you can find other ways to fund your FAD, that's great too!
|Travel to FAD, departure
|Travel to FAD, arrival
|Travel from FAD, departure
|Travel from FAD, arrival
|Ticket cost
|Travel to FAD, departure
|Travel to FAD, arrival
|Travel from FAD, departure
|Travel from FAD, arrival
|Ticket cost
|Travel to FAD, departure
|Travel to FAD, arrival
|Travel from FAD, departure
|Travel from FAD, arrival
|Ticket cost
- Travel: $A for airfare, bus, train, etc. funding needed to get attendees to the FAD
- Housing: $B for hotel, etc. needed to have attendees sleep during the FAD
- link to hotel room booking website, if applicable
- Space: $C for renting space to hack in, if applicable
- address and travel details for the space
- Supplies: $D for anything else you may need
- item
- item
- item
Total budget: $A+B+C+D


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Finally! TV Commercials to Get Quieter
Say goodbye to those obnoxiously loud television commercials! Starting Thursday at midnight, commercials will legally have be within two decibels of the programming during which they air.
According to Today, 2 db isn't just a random number. Joe Addalia, Hearst Televison's director of technology projects, provided research that suggests that anything louder than 2 decibels is "the difference between viewers reaching for the remote and not."
Has your favorite show been canceled?
Though there have always been volume limits on programming set by stations, the upper limit was set to accommodate peak sounds such as a gunshot. Before the implementation of the new law, called the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), advertisers tended to air entire commercials at the peak level.
Joel Kelsey, legislative director for Free Press, explained the need for the CALM Act, stating that loud commercials "have consistently been one of the issues consumers are most energized to write the FCC about. They don't like being screamed at every time the program breaks to buy deodorant."
Are you excited about quieter commercials?
View original Finally! TV Commercials to Get Quieter at TVGuide.com